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Linux Kernel Developer Declares VirtualBox Driver "Crap"
An anonymous reader writes "Linux kernel developers have decided to mark the VirtualBox kernel driver as tainted crap for the significant number of problems this open-source driver has caused. The VirtualBox kernel driver reportedly causes memory corruption and other problems. With the driver being flagged as tainted crap, bug reports caused by the driver will be taken less seriously."
awesome
Can that tag be applied to users, too?
I wonder if this has anything to do with this problem.
An anonymous coward writes
...so instead of just complaining, they could fix it and offer the patch back to Oracle.
I do believe that people who complain about problems in the Linux kernel and other open source products are often told to do just that. Why expect others to do as you say, if you won't do the same?
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
VirtualBox is open source. Instead of name-calling and whining, how about fixing the underlying problem?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
One of the developers wanted to flag the vbox driver as tainted to keep bug submissions on it from going to kernel devs.
this is *way* overblown.
Really, you should just refuse to provide any help or consideration for people using virtual box like you guys do if anyone is using a binary driver. I mean lets face it, thats what you're doing here. This is just another form of NIH syndrome.
As a developer, I understand the frustration of dealing with someone elses shitty software that you have absolutely no control over.
This however is one of those situations where there is no doubt what so ever that rather than just whining about it, he could have done something useful about it. The drivers aren't THAT complex in the first place. If he is so confident that it has these problems then surely he has documented when they occur as proof, which means fixing them should be fairly trivial as well.
Instead of being so high and mighty ... oh never mind, whats the point, its not your fault, its someone elses, your code is awesome and everyone will bow down to you guys. I know you guys like to think Linux is ruling the world, but you're still no where near big enough to start trying to pull an Apple/Google/Microsoft and force people to do it your way. You've tried this before and again, you'll lose.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
If only the Linux kernel could declare more code crap, perhaps they could improve the kernel. This appears to be searching for gold in poo. I understand people do this, but can't we choose to refactor gradually with better kernel security/permissions. They already have thrown out older graphics cards from the kernel, so now they seem to be removing newer code they find annoying too.
Most people here are familiar with VirtualBox... regardless of whether they run it on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris or your mom. For all others, there's www.virtualbox.org
An open-source developer calls an open-source driver "tainted crap", and recommend a commercial alternative instead. Obviously, Oracle has something to do with that, but I'm a bit curious: are there any good open-source (or even free) virtualization software, aside from VirtualBox? Or might it be an area where FOSS just doesn't work very well (there are a few, IMHO).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Considering that it is also on Windows AND Mac OSX, and is free, and is literally only a Google away, I don't feel the need to explain it to you what it does.
(Hint, the name "Virtual" is a huge giveaway)
Better to be strict, a badly written kernel module in an hypervisor is a security nightmare. Also oracle doesn't seem very idealistic about FOSS and even shows little lip service to it, so I think that simply waiting for them to fix stuff would not have worked so much.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
It compiles and runs fine on my machine. :-P
Then I'd expect you all to know about a Windows and/or Mac OS X application.
Does this affect installations where VirtualBox is run on a Linux host? Or does it affect installations where Linux is run as a VirtualBox guest? Also, is the driver in question part of the kernel, or is it part of VirtualBox?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I used vbox for several straight months doing quite a bit of Linux development using it, hosted on a Win7 machine. Other than missing a few nice to have features I could have used, like drag and drop that VMware has, I had zero issues with it. A lot of the features VMware has I didn't need, so stuck with what was working. The "crap" drivers made the VM as seemless as possible for me, and in full screen mode, was no different than booting into Ubuntu in classic mode (which is what I prefer anyway).
I'd really like to know how many people are genuinely affected by these issues. I can't imagine I'm the only one that had zero issues.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
Sorry, but here is a concise explanation that I think you will find helpful. Couldn't put it in the summery now, but you should get the idea.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=virtualbox&l=1
The standard refrain of "it's FOSS! If you don't like it, fix it!" is retarded. As a long time FOSS developer, I have my own projects that use up my free time. Projects that I want to work on and contribute my own way. I don't have time to fix other code that, while qualified to fix it, is not related to my project... Sometimes you can look at another piece of code and say "this is crap, someone needs to fix this"...
For example, there are parts of mythtv that suck ass.. I've submitted a few bug reports, a few of them have been fixed.. I've even submitted a patch that I outlined as completely wrong but submitted as an illustration that it worked around a specific problem for me... But I don't have time to do the rewrite the subsystem in question... I don't want to hack mythtv; I just want to watch TV after I'm done hacking for the day. Does that mean I should shut up and not point out deficiencies in hopes that someone will fix them?
Its a non-existant three dimensional cube
If the free (like speech) system does not work for that person / company then there is no reason for them to use it.
If, as you postulate, there is a closed source system "that works" then they may want to use that.
UNLESS they want to avoid any of the OTHER problems with closed source software.
Just a thought, since this happens under Linux only, could the cause be on the other side, perhaps?
I was thinking about making some snide remark about that being the case.
Except for the fact that the driver is custom written for the OS.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Forgetting arguments about who should fix it, the irony is that the "oh so much better" vmware will of course still taint your kernel, since it needs a partially proprietary module.. God, fuck all these lame sites.
About the TAINT_CRAP... it is convenience for kernel developers and is applied to drivers in the kernel source itself, the ones in the staging directory..
The linked lkml thread has disappeared.
I've been using Vbox on windows and macosx without problems (before that VMWare and Parallels). :(( ) or,
for linux only, OpenVZ.
On linux, vbox is a hassle. It's easier and faster to use KVM, qemu (no USB though
On windows, I'd reconsider. But I don't need IE6 anymore, nor Windows.
my $.02
Windows 95 in only 16 colors sucks. Why can't a VM emulate a S3 Trio64v+ w/ Voodoo2 and a 'perfect' AWE32 already?
To those saying FOSS devs should fix it, fix it yourself.
Anyone who cares about fixing the code is welcome to it, but the kernel developers do not care. They just don't want to be bothered with bug reports anymore.
take it out of the mainline kernel until the major bugs are fixed.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I wouldn't call VirtualBox on Mac OS X perfect. I run it constantly to keep a Windows 7 VM going. I've seen it cause a kernel panic once, it's USB device support is sketchy and slow at best on the 64-bit Darwin kernel, usually it doesn't work at all. The snapshot feature (I'm running 4.1.4) has been pretty damn broken for me since the last three releases, it almost never successfully deletes snapshots and I have to go manually dick around with VDI files. I've never been able to get a VM's network interface to work as "bridged" on a bonded host interface, I always have to use NAT. Sometimes the Windows 7 VM just completely locks up for several minutes at a time, usually after some semi-transparent artifact is left on the display (no, this is not with Aero or even Direct3D enabled). Direct3D support in their Windows driver is shoddy at best, but they've marked that as experimental anyways. So no, not nearly trouble free by any means, but hey, it's free!
grep -iw skynet
Nay! It is a cube whose essence is purely of virtue!
...this is the same thing, only centuries older. Kind of like how VirtualBox compares with Q, Xen, VMware... and pretty much every other hypervisor or emulator in existence.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Probably tagged as crap by developers at Microsoft... who write nothing but colorful crap.
I have been using Virtualbox for years and never had any of those issues. This is the first notice I have about it not being just awesome.
Not all of Virtual box is open source. If you want guest opsys to have any reasonable access to say, USB, you have to get the non-open source (but for now, still free as in beer) version. Betcha a buck that this is what they are calling crap, and can't fix because no one gets the source to it. Go get virtual box and see for yourself on this, it's quite clear on the downloads page. Yeah, you can get a really hobbled open source version, but if like me, you're using it to run windows on a linux machine, and the reason for windows is to run a USB embedded device programmer, you don't have a ton of choice about this one.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Exactly. For the price it's hard to beat Virtual Box. It works well on my linux laptop as I can run XP on a laptop in Fullscreen and it looks like it was made for it. Totally flawless. The funny thing is that a VM is the only way the laptop will run XP as it's got no drivers for XP at all. It's neat for those times I need a program that's XP only and it wont work in Wine. Wine, when it works, is really amazing but a lot of stuff need to be run in a VM.
Tainted crap receives no tainted love.
I'm going to play devil's advocate/troll here, and throw back the same line that I always hear from other developers when I have a complaint.
If you don't like it, why don't you fix it yourself?
Everyone just complaints and nobody does anything to fix problems. Bunch of whiners.
I've used VirtualBox installed in Linux to run Win XP in a virtual machine and it has generally been stable. That said, if the drivers are so bad, what is the alternative?
Is VMware Player any better?
I attempted to set up VMware Player a few years ago and found it difficult compared to VirtualBox. Has the setup/user interface improved?
Does it have any Windows support? Does it support USB 2.0?
I seem to have problems with snapshots as shown in my forum thread: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=43768 ... :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Too bad they're mounted upside down to blow air up the kernel developer's backsides, to get oxygen to where they've wedged their heads.
I've used all the major virtualization products. No one *cares* about the details of the kernel drivers. Virtualbox is good enough to work well, and the management interface is far superior to that multiple-virtualization piece of festering canine colonic cancer known as the libirt toolkit and its hideously metastasized progeny, the virt-manager and virsh. Inventing your own undocumented and unmanagable language with worse incompatibilities with its own vaunted featuresets than a first week python or perl programmer could write is not a usable toolkit. These idiots need to learn, *no one cares about the kernel features if they can't get it working*.
I'll trade in the 40 hours I just *wasted* integratiing debris for a customer who insists "KVM is free!", and for which I charged them over $5000, and spend the time setting up 100 Virtualbox environments that *work*.
Oracle has been notorious for crash-happy buggy software for 20+ years (my experience with them goes all the way back to Oracle 5.)
They are the SLOWEST company on the planet for delivering bug fixes.
They are also one of the RICHEST companies on the planet.
Why should ANYONE fix Oracle's mess for free, when all they're going to do is turn around and bundle it in a for-profit package, giving whoever fixed the problem diddly squat in return?
Open source does not mean "let me dump my untested code on the internet and let someone fix it for me." The originator of the code is always responsible for doing their best to deliver a quality solution. Any person or company using the "dump" approach deserves nothing but ridicule for their lazy incompetence.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
To find out
a) Is what they're asking actually what they need (cf "We need MS Office 2003 compatability, ergo we need MS Office 2007")
b) Is what they're asking soluble with computers
c) What can be solved that gets them to their goal by software and what by other means (including "don't do that")?
d) See whether the result is still what the user wants, else go back to 1.
Gee, 180 degrees in front of students means the prof. Actually, the more complex a software, the more likely bugs due to side effects caused by features crops up.
And since when does memory leak problem disappear with poor programming practices.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Its a non-existant three dimensional cube
So... How is your new job at the department of redundancy department working out for you?
The answers are:
[_] Get a bigger hammer (BFMI^2) ... (YMMV on this one, depending on the school or workplace, and the number of Powerpoint presentations you've been subjected to over your lifetime)
..." that really means "Everyone assumes ..."? (a polite way of saying go away, you're bugging me).
... by the time they get back to you, it'll either be someone else's problem, or more important issues will have surfaced, or you'll be able to say "that version is no longer supported").
[_] Open-source it, tell the end user to RTFM, and file it as either NOT_A_BUG or WONT_FIX in the bug tracker.
[_] Write a program to debug it, duh! because programs that debug programs are almost as happy as programs that write programs
[_] Finally sit down and write the documentation, and enlightenment will happen (this actually works often enough to warrant trying it)
[_] More printfs.
[_] assert() is your friend.
[_] Programming is a journey. Getting there is half the fun.
[_] By becoming even more clever at debugging. It's not like I stopped learning the moment I entered the door, you know
[_] Offer a bounty, because most bugs just need a fresh set of eyeballs, not new insights.
[_] Ask Slashdot - it's what everyone does with their homework.
[_] Change the specs and FEATURE IT!
[_] By being stupid, of course. Looking at every line like I'm a total dumb-ass, and eventually I'll find the line where I *was* a total dumb-ass. It's the "method acting school of debugging".
[_] By looking for the constant that isn't or the variable that doesn't, double-duh!
[_] "Taint." "Huh?" "It was assigned to CowboyNeal, so 'tain't my problem any more."
[_] "That'll be fixed in the next version. If we fix it now, why would anyone want to upgrade?" (Sales and Marketing will be on your side on this one, for once).
[_] "Have you tried tech support?" (from the BOfH "Hey, if I'm going to go through hell fixing it, let them go through hell reporting it" school of thought).
[_] You say "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place". Do you have any formal proof of this, or is that just one of those "Everyone knows
[_] Allocate twice as long to debugging as to coding. Then, if I'm really clever, I should be able to slack off 2/3 of the time. If not, I'm still within the time budget, so what's the problem again?
[_] "Oh, that's only a prototype."
[_] "That's strange. It works for everyone else. Are you sure you don't have a virus or you're not doing something wrong?" (Give them list of long things to check that have zero to do with the issue
Any others?
I'm not holding my breath, as Oracle's moves with open source are scattered. Hopefully Oracle can ensure future kernel modules are clean. However, VirtualBox remains to be free, and as such is a very good product from a user's perspective. I compare it to VMWare Workstation, and I see dramatic speed improvement using VirtualBox running on Linux, over VMWare Workstation running on Windows.
This Blog is tainted crap and as such should be regarded as stupid spam
It's the usual scenario, you pick the idiot:
1. OSS evangelist throws sales pitch at newbie
2. Newbie starts using OSS, tries to file a bug
3. "Scratch my own itch" developer tells him to get lost
That's easy; the "Newbie" didn't do his "caveat emptor".
Exactly the same things apply no matter how much you pay for a copy of software. If you were buying the physical medium (or paying the cost of a server) the price would be tiny or covered by the adverts (or something). What you're paying for is a bribe so the author will come back and do something to fix your problems or make something even better. With free software the author has stated they're not particularly interested in getting cash (or don't expect to get enough for it to be worthwhile) so you need another way of getting their attention.
Sometimes flattery works; but they tend to be pretty good at spotting saccharin. Of course a newbie bug report often starts off: "This software is crap!", this is not a good start. Other times nothing can work, because just a "bug report" is never enough, the developer has to be able to reproduce the problem. I expect this is the issue for the Linux kernel developers in respect of the virtualbox module. They never use the module, they use physical machines or kvm (and used to use vmware).
One last thing; don't let this put you off from sending bug reports, it may be that just the information you can send is enough for this bug, this gets much more likely if you can send an effective bug report.